f13.net

Yes, its on IGN. (http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/748723/warhammer-online/videos/warhammer_online_gameplay_0.html?download=true)

I can't see it from work =(

EDIT: I downloaded it, not sure if it is from E3. Anyway, there it is.

That video does them no favors... I don't know how the game plays, but it doesn't LOOK good. All I see is the chaotic, largely meaningless reality of zerg on zerg PvP. That there are only about four distinct sounds is disappointing, and the spell animations are annoying rather than visibly unique. Except that giant falling rock thing... whatever that is. I'd feel embarrassed casting that, not mighty. Characters seem to have more unique looks than they used to, I couldn't pick up classes by their cookie-cutter appearance. Those solid, unwaving capes everybody was wearing REALLY brought back DAoC memories. Memories of being in the train across the frontier. Capecapecapecapecapecapecapecapecapecape...

I don't think it would have been so bad if 3 of those 4 sounds had been something other than explosions.

That does remind me of the same sort of grabasstastic chaotic clusterfuck that most PUG RVR fights ended up being.

That video sucked. I'm both disappointed and elated by that fact. Disappointed because I was hoping that Mythic would kick some ass since I'm a DAoC fan. Elated because I wouldn't be able to play it anyways due to my current social life and now see that I won't be missing anything.

Hmm.  Hopefully there's topping.  Seems very 1999 with new models/textures otherwise  Not very tactical. For instance, is there the ability climb walls and build siege engines?  You could/can at least do those things in DAoC.

It was particularly sad to see the throne room mosh pit.  That ended every PUG train in DAoC.  And it may be that's how this RvR supposed to end.  But frankly it should be more -- at least by now, 2008.

What's with the quest "!" over the mages (?) head.  He become a quest giver?  Sort of a kill-me-now sign to the enemy.

There's certainly a lot of magic effects going on.  I'm sure some of those Dwarfs had laser cannons.

The problem is that very early on in the development process, Mythic adopted the artistic affectation that "CROWD CONTROL IS BAD."  Its one of those decisions that reeks of idiosyncratic designer snobbery rather than having a basis in logic (see: no /dance). 

....well, without crowd control, you have people whaling on each other and healers healing them.  That's, um, it.  No tactical dimension at all.   

You forgot collision detection, and I think they did as well.

This game is still around?  :awesome_for_real:

Last time this subject came up we lost 25 posts.

I think it's time to state outright that good gameplay videos need to lie to the players. The game doesn't look like a gameplay video while you're playing it, because you're concentrating on your own character and your target. You get a sort of tunnel vision that CANNOT be simulated just by replaying the video for someone unaware of the situation. Falsified, directed videos can therefore feel more "real" than the raw footage.

This is also why so many PvP videos on Youtube are so relentlessly uninspiring.

Blizzard is, once again, the company to watch. Their "gameplay" videos have been consistantly and capably stage-managed to show off the coolest possible moments while players use their flashiest skills and generally look like they're kicking ass. Action is the focus and chaos is kept to a minimum, usually appearing only in the background. Players do not feel betrayed because they still feel badass in the game. They see themselves doing awesome things in-game whether it's the focus of a screenshot or not.

I think that was a devcam walk through.

It's an artistic affectation I agree with. There is nothing more psychologically frustrating to a player than having control removed from you and watching you and your teammates die helplessly.

There are ways to accomplish the goals of crowd control in pvp (enabling melee to close range with ranged, giving outnumbered forces a chance at survival especially against less skilled players) without making the target's keyboard useless for X seconds.

I actually have somewhat of a reputation on my team for having smoke pour from my ears whenever the words "crowd control" are mentioned.

(Disclaimer: I have no idea how this would actually relate to WAR, as I do not have a beta account for hopefully obvious reasons and have not been following discussion of the game very closely.)

While I too am not very fond of crowd control, I think that there is a huge difference between applications that often gets disregarded.  A mez, root, or snare is one thing, especially when they break upon damage.  They can be used tactically to great effect without causing too much frustration to the person suffering the effects.  Stuns on the other hand are the dumbest addition to a pvp game that I've ever seen.  Forcing players to take damage for x seconds while being helpless is just poorly thought out implementation.  On that regard, I'll agree with Lum completely. 

Then there's the issue of stealth... which I also believe has no place in a pvp game.  Balancing initiative is virtually impossible in an evolving game. 

As a practical matter, I don't dispute player frustration with CC.  But people generally aren't willing to recognize the downside of removing it:  losing a significant tactical dimension from PvP.  You are basically left with tank'n'heal. 

Here's an example of how it forces you into certain design decisions.  You say "there are other ways for melee to close with ranged."  Ok-- let's say they can do that.  Now, your ranged has to either:

1)  Have crowd control to reestablish range (which, according to the trendy view, sends the meleer into helpless rage and he cancels his account instantly), or

2)  The ranged has the same amount of armor as a warrior.  In this scenario, the "ranged" and melee characters stand three inches from each other the entire fight and trade blows.

I guess #2 leaves melee happy because they aren't separated from their opponent for even a nanosecond.  But doesn't it allow more depth to design around #1, giving BOTH combatants a chance (depending on skill and timing) to either close the gap or reestablish it, all the while testing them along another axis as well (actual combat)?   I don't see a magic third way between #1 and #2- either ranged can keep/reestablish distance (necessitating CC) or he can't (and wears plate mail).     

So intercut the devcam walkthrough with exciting, staged moments showcasing player abilities, spell effects, and animations.

Or the ranged character has an escape ability on a timer (similar to Vanish for rogues in WoW).

Or the ranged character has some healing ability (potions/whatever) that gives them a few seconds of flexibility.

Or the ranged character simply dies, because he's in a 1v1 (which is arguably impossible to keep both balanced and fun in every situation throughout an MMO assuming differing playstyles/abilities without making every character functionally identical) vs a character that can kill him in a situation where that character is designed to kill him, whereas ranged characters may have been intended to act as second-line troops firing from behind a front line of melee.

Regardless, my point is that all of these imply interesting choices and/or consequences. Being impotently frozen out of controlling your character is not interesting.

A minor counter:  what about all the out-of-range nukings (e.g. turrets) that happen?  I saw a lot of nuking happening in that video -- massive ranged damage players on the field with their healers would be challenged with.  I'm not sure that's also fun/fair since players also have no way of countering or avoiding them.

I feel like this is just a tad extreme.  If you are making a DaoC/WoW style game, it just seems like you are throwing away options unnecessarily.

Frost Nova for the mage in WoW is a good example of solid crowd control.  It's short, close range, most everyone can break it with a timered ability, you can still do things when it affects you, but at the same time it's quite a bit of fun for the mage and quite effective in certain situations.  I feel like my gameplay as a mage was massively enhanced by it.  I'm sure other classes were mildly frustrated by it...but certainly not so much that it harmed their gameplay experience.

Sorcerers/Healers/Bards at release in DaoC were examples of bad crown control .  Long range, long term, something you didn't even see coming half of the time and then all of the sudden two of your groupmates are just dead while you still have 15 seconds of being mezzed.

I think as long as your crowd control is not extreme, short, personalized, and something you can always see coming, it can be and should be an enriching part of the overall MMORPG PvP gameplay experience.  Not saying you couldn't live without it...but I'm not sure I would have too much fun as a class in any MMORPG PvP that didn't have some sort of personalized self-survival crowd control.  My friar in DaoC taught me very well that this is just not that fun to me (although I did enjoy my friar as a beatdown laying backup healer).  Being able to tactically employ crowd control is just...well, essential to my mindset after playing a mage in WoW.  Not being able to do it would piss me off something fierce, even if no one else could do it either.

 Some more ideas for good crowd control:

A pacifism type spell which allows the character to move around freely but not attack for 3 or 4 seconds, a knockback spell which only takes away control for a split second (not to be confused with knockdown), an 'empathy' type spell which forces the character to take 150% of the damage they dish out back for 6-7 seconds, very brief stuns which quickly reach immunity...I'm sure others can think of plenty others.  Just pilfer Guild Wars' ideas, they had far more interesting skills than any other MMORPG to date, and sticking their skills in a 'normal' diku would result in some damn fun classes.

Your third point makes sense.  As to 1, I'd argue that's still CC.  Maybe psychologically, it makes a difference whether A) Your character is slowed/rooted/snared/silenced/disarmed, or B)  your opponent is speeded up or uses a trick (blink, vanish, etc).  I guess you'd know the answer to that much better than most of us.   

With crowd control though, the PvP tactics largely boil down to "cc'ers cc everyone they can, rest of the zerg ball target-assists the leader to roll hapless victims one by one". While there's some very baiscs tactics to that approach, i'd argue it ain't much fun for anyone involved since the requirement of quick-thinking and reacting to the events as they happen is removed from most of the participants.

Not to say the people hitting each other and healers healing them is that much different _without_ CC, but the "tactical dimension" brought by CC just doesn't enhance game experience in practice, imo. It's rather easy to verify playing the LotRO 'monsterplay' -- the CC element is very heavy there as it's applied straight from PvE, and it's perhaps the single most frequent complain about the whole experience... to the point it's being heavily curbed with next game patch.

I'm not sure if you're trying to imply "well, only you would know the difference because it's all in your mind" or "well, only you'd know the difference because someone stunlocked you as a child" or if I'm just being Sensitive Guy. Regardless, the difference is what I listed earlier - the other player has not lost control of their character, having to watch events passively.

On second thought, the whole "without cc there's just people beating each other up and that's not tactical" thing is quite bunk. When you consider there's been couple thousand years worth of military tactics developed by now around exactly this very concept -- people beating each other up without magic ways to turn the enemy into sheep or slow them down or make them fall asleep until hit with a stick...

Let us rephrase.

Will WAR replace all the CC found in your average DIKU with new and exciting ways to wage battle?


Prediction: No.

Who really cares. The game is going to suck crowd control or not. Those guys that die are going to spawn at a graveyard 30 seconds away without any real consequences. They will run directly back to the fight creating a failure loop. It will turn into a game of who can stay awake the longest.

None of the above.  Just meant that since you are in the biz, you are more qualified in figuring out what actually causes people to cancel their accounts than I am.  No intent to offend. 

Um,  Enchanters at release in EQ were the ultimate examples of bad crowd control.  Two enchanters could keep someone charmed essentially forever, dragging them around with them wherever they went like a pet.

Eliminating ALL crowd control from PvP does seem a bit draconian.  There are lots of effects as described in other posts here that can add interesting tactical options without being overpowering.  Also add Taunts, Intercepts, and physical blocking (requires collision detection) to that list.  The key is balance, as with everything else in PvP.  Balance is hard.  Nerfing things into uselessness (or nonexistance) is much easier.

The real problem is that crowd control, like ranged combat, is very hard, if not impossible, to implement in a way that is fun and balanced for both PvP and PvE simultaneously.  Far too many ranged classes (more often archers than casters for some reason) have been nerfed into uselessness in PvE for the sake of PvP balance.  Any developer having both PvP and PvE in their game needs to work extra hard to avoid gimping entire classes in one or the other by balancing them separately.

Disclosure: I was an archer at DAoC's release.  I was nerfed into uselessness in PvE for the sake of PvP balance a couple months in.  I'm not bitter, I just quit. Like I quit CoH when they nerfed my blaster into wimpitude for the sake of the upcoming PvP in CoV (the post-30 exp wall was also a factor), and like I would have quit EQ when I learned how useless Ranger's bows were, had there been ANY other games to choose from at the time. 

OK, I lied.  I AM still bitter about that DAoC nerf.  Mostly because it was solely needed for PvP.  Archers in PvE were by no means uber prior to the nerf, but were totally gimped and unable to help a group against anything even con or higher post nerf.  All because lazy developers balanced their ability based on PvP rather than separating PvP from PvE.

RL has other forms of 'crowd control', like injuries that slow soldiers down, the condition of terrain (e.g. forcing your opponents to run uphill / through mud) having to actually stop and block / avoid ranged fire (locked down behind cover) and a number of such other things.

That's too sophisticated for online games at the moment, so some degree of CC is a reasonable alternative to provide tactical options.

Also, quite a few of those RL situations say that range > melee, which makes all those martial artists feel unhappy in paying the sub fee to play a character that is automatically gimped because they keep getting owned by rifle fire.

It's a question of duration, range and radius.


CC in DaoC blows chunks because your entire group got locked into place helpless for 60 seconds, in a game where it took less then six seconds to wipe the group out.

That's a fair point. Some of these things are implemented like the ranged fire locking people down, but made me wonder if any MMO tried to modify movement speed depending on terrain type (road, mud, going uphill/downhill etc) and if any did, what was the outcome...

Actually it's not but it's not something you normally see in MMORPGs. MP FPSes have a lot of this sort of stuff, though. E.g. "suppressive fire" (forcing your opponents to duck behind cover) does work in games like CoD 4. Gears of War with the whole "blind fire" mechanic does this as well.

Once you mix in melee combat with ranged combat, however, it messes it all up unless melee have a way of avoiding/dodging/blocking incoming fire (a la GunZ).

Did WWIIOL try to get this ambitious?

I think the mix of melee and ranged is the primary thing that makes realistic 'crowd control' difficult to implement, because the technology is certainly there to include terrain movement modifiers, visual impairment, suppressing fire, and so on.  But when your melee guys have to compete with guys with ranged weaponry, you have to come up with alternate rules for your fictional world, because in real life ranged > melee, period.  Like Trippy noted, in FPS games you don't need crowd control because you don't need to make melee competitive.  An assault rifle is better than a crowbar, everyone knows that, and nobody expects the guy with the crowbar to be able to take down the guy with the assault rifle in a 'fair fight'.  Games that mix melee and ranged have to make it so that you can bring a knife to a gunfight and still be on even footing.

Regardless, passive 'crowd control' - that is, escape abilities, methods to control the shape of the battlefield, channel your opponents, etc, are better than 'active' crowd control - removing control of your enemy's character.  If you can put an obstacle in my path to make me circle around it, or create an area I can't move through at my full speed, or have your fighters stand in a row and block my path, that's a lot better than making my controls useless for a short period of time.  It's also more tactical, because mezzes or other forms of active CC do boil down to 'cc everyone you can, assist <leader> to kill them one at a time'.  In my opinion, spells like Web, Wall of Force/Stone/Fire/Ice, Entangle, and the ever-humble Grease (all from AD&D) would be much better options in MMOG combat than spells like WoW's Polymorph or Fear, or EQ's Mez.  And yet we see very few games that have 'battlefield-shaping' options in their spell repertoires, and those that do have very few of them.  Almost all spells directly affect the enemy rather than altering the battlefield to change tactical conditions to your favor.

DAoC showed that escape abilities can be every bit as annoying as cc.  See SoS and charge.  Yes, charge... an ability added for offensive reasons was used by many as a way to flee. 

I think that cc in a game does work and does add a tactical element if three criteria are satisfied: 1) That classes exist in game with the ability to remove the effects in a brief amount of time (cure disease, cure NS, demezz, etc.),  2) That all forms of cc break on damage and 3) an immunity timer is in place such that a cc effect can't be continuously reapplied with the original duration. 

Long time CC and stuns in DAoC where necessary because of the cast interrupt system, which made it impossible for casters to defend themselves.

In my opinion the more a game relies on CC, the more the game mechanics/systems suck and the less balanced a game is.

In principle CC should protect squishies and get them out of range. But this might be achieved through collision detection and PvP taunt, like WAR is approaching, just passive through group play. Lost tactical depth through missing long term CC, gets outweighed by these tactical features....however we have to see if these mechanics really work.

However WAR does have CC mechanics, but they are short (snares, knock backs, roots) and other combat avoiding abilities, like speed buffs.

So, how about that video? eh? eh?

Things that stood out to me:

1) The models seem kind of stiff.  Maybe they are supposed to me simulating Figures in combat? (like the Chess fight in Kara)

2) The exclamation point was distracting. 

3) I didn't get any kind of feel for the complexity of the systems behind the combat.  I hope it's not as simple as it looked.

I've longed stopped trying to make any qualified judgments from Mythic's game play videos. They sucked in DaoC, they suck for WAR.


With that said, the animations and attacks are slow and stiff. If that is any indication of how they actually play out, I will be disappointed.

The video leaves me Not Impressed.  Doesn't look that great to me, I don't get much of a feel for the mechanics, and the combat looks...chaotic and, well, like someone said above, realistic - which is a bad thing to include in a gameplay video.  I'm not going to base my opinion of the game on this video, but it's certainly not doing anything to get me interested or excited.  In contrast, back when I saw Lineage II's videos I immediately wanted to play that game.  Hell, even today looking at those videos is exciting and makes me feel a twinge of 'I want to go back to L2'.

The problem isn't that tank'n'heal is all you are left with, the problem is that the implementation of tank'n'heal is FUCKING BORING. Melee combat by itself should not be boring, but MMOG's have reduced it to its most boring possible implementation ever. Having to add other bullshit for crowd control is a bandaid on what is essentially really boring mechanics for combat that is held over from text-only MUD mechanics.

SWG slowed you down based on terrain slope - running up a hill slowed you down, a steep hill slowed you down a LOT.  But running around the side of the hill at a steady elevation slowed you not at all.  Unfortunately, I can't recall ever seeing any pvp anywhere other than in pancake-flat city areas, so I don't know if anyone ever used it to make a difference.  It sure as heck didn't seem to slow the closing rate of NPCs, but then NPCs generally cheat in most games anyway.

As for ranged vs melee, real world effects kept melee in the game until the age of muskets at least.  Arrows and such are much less useful beyond direct-fire range in woods for example.  And melee combat still isn't completely out of the picture as close quarters combat training still includes various non-firearm techinques, and probably always will. 

But why the heck modern and futuristic MMORPGs feel compelled to accomodate melee as a viable exclusive combat style on an artificially enforced equal footing with ranged weapons baffles me.  EVERYBODY in a modern army learns to use a ranged weapon.  And the same is true for most futuristic IPs, with the exception of Jedi and Dune.  That being a fencer or polearm specialist with no ability to even fire a ranged weapon should be a viable character class in a game with modern or futuristic weapons is just absurd.  But I guess it's a lazy designer's solution to coming up with more distinctive "character classes" combined with a well-intended but misguided attempt to deal with the repercussions of necessary design choices to limit the range and damage capabilities of modern weapons in a game setting.

Being one-shotted by a foe a mile away that you never even saw will never be fun.  But even if you lowered the damage levels (with personal shields or body armor or whatever) and limited the effective ranges to a couple hundred meters, wouldn't it be cool to have a game with ranged weapons that worked well enough that tactics and use of cover were more effective strategies than simply close and bashem like neanderthals?

I'm pretty sure DAoC did the same thing. Can't be sure though, it's been a few years since I've played.

Not sure about slopes/hills in DAoC, but turning slowed you down.

Real life has collision detection. Most pvp games don't.

That's not true. It's rare for a PvP game *not* to have collision detection. Even in the genre of MMORPGs that have PvP I'm not even sure that's true.

What MMOs did you have in mind?

MMO PvP games I've played without Collision Detection:
Jumpgate
Shadowane
AC
Wish (just kidding)
DAOC (at least when I played)
WoW

MMO PvP games I've played with Collision Detection:
Planetside? (I dont' remember)

One oversight in the whole melee vs ranged thing for me is, "why do spellcasters have to stand still to cast?" Melee need ways to close on Ranged, and currently ranged need ways to escape or survive melee. In all the games I've played casters have to stand still while a melee person charges them casting. Maybe it would be an idea to change this mechanic. I wouldn't mind it if it took 50% longer to cast, or cost some more energy or did slightly less damage, if I could be mobile while casting. Mobility is huge in PvP.

I'm agreed though that Stealth, Fears, Stuns and Banishes are bad mechanics. Although I'm fine with CC's and abilites that hinder, but don't completely exclude a player e.g. roots, snares, slows. I also think abilities which did stuff like teleport enemies to another spot (away from you) could be fun.

CC is ok if you put long immunity timers on it.  For example, If I get CC'd for 2 seconds, I should be immune to all CC for the next 25.  The problems come in when you can chain CC a person.

I seem to remember some New Frontiers terrain that had slopes that were impassable going up and also marsh areas that had a snare effect.

MMOs that have it off the top of my head.

UO
EQ
CoH/CoV
Planetside does have it

I don't PvP much but I'm sure there are others.

EVE has collision detection!

I'm pretty sure Wish had collision detection.  (It was so long ago though, I could be mistaken.)

Well, WAR is supposed to have it (i think) so if CC is just poor man's substitute for that so there can be tactics(tm) ... then lack of cc in this particular game shouldn't result in lack of tactical engagements?

Having a freighter or other capital ship stuck on loot container was always a /facepalm moment for me. :uhrr:

giev missl or bump

Fury had quite a few good ideas in relation to CC, such as any damage knocking you out of that state. To me, that is a better option than all CC's lasting for X seconds regardless of what is going on.

I also like the idea that instead of a large number of different CC types, you work on a continuum from unaffected -> locked down and all that changes are the external graphic effects for flavour. CC could build from different sources, but it would take a lot for you to lose control of the character (and taking damage would drop you down the continuum towards unaffected too).

This is why I find it bizarre when people suggest that collision detection would cause the sky to fall because of 'exploits'.

No it wouldn't. Plenty of games already have it. And <checks window> yes, sky is still in place.

CC works fine as long as you provide adequate counters to it, made available to all players. Items that grant temporary immunity, buffs that can be cast onto you to prevent you from being CC'ed for x time, etc...

So you never got stuck between a train and an ogre wall at the zoneline in EQ?

Or had an invisible griefer blocking the only entrance to the building you were in?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for collision detection. But to suggest that exploiting isn't often a problem is erroneous.

Honestly, no, I never really had any significant problems with people blocking my path that I can recall in my many years of playing EQ.  I did occasionally run across places that were difficult to get through because there were a lot of people there, perhaps even people trying to block the path, I don't really know, but it was never too difficult to move through them.  EQ characters don't block 100% of the space they occupy, there's pretty much always a way through.

Regardless, this is an easy to solve problem anyways - I think they covered it in UO, where you could shove others out of the way and it would use some stamina.  CoH's 'shoving' is too sensitive, all I have to do is have someone walk past me and I'll usually be inched out of the way a bit, but a system whereby you can be pushed by an intentional act (target character, click 'push' or 'shove' or even 'push past' ability).  The last would be the most foolproof method, allowing you to move through the other character's space by pushing past them.  These of course would be non-combat abilities, combat related pushing and such would rely on different mechanics.

This.

I suspect some people here were playing on the bizarro-world evil server, widely known to be populated almost exclusively by pantomine villians and team rocket.

Warhammeronline.com and it's DAoC equivalent have been down since around 11... Weak.

Actually, and unfortunately, we did not.  What we had was point-and-click movement, but it was "stateless", and according to our lead programmer it was impossible to even get it to recognize that a door was closed (which is why there weren't any).

We did have a very different CC paradigm planned, though.  CC was bound to a location, with an in-game object representing the spell, one that could be attacked and destroyed.  The idea was that it was one of several area-based spells (including buffs, debuffs, and slow heals and poisons) that required the caster of them to remain fairly close to the location, creating the equivalent of field fortifications.  The only one that would completely stop movement through it had two specific limitations planned:

1) The focus objects were at the perimeter.

2) Friendly movement within the AOE would be slowed, it would act as a snare even to them.  If that was too strong or annoying, then it would just neutralize any speed buffs.

All of this would work on a "concentration" like Focus system (so the really wide AE's would take a high-level caster to maintain, and it might be the only effect he'd be keeping up), and take some expensive and possibly bulky physical reagents.  I was considering some other variations, like multi-caster versions, tying the destruction of a focus object to some kind of negative effect on the caster like temporarily unusable Focus points or other negative debuffs, and "anchored" semi-permanent versions for House controlled towns.  Focus powers wouldn't affect NPC's, and ordinary spell versions of crowd control wouldn't affect players.  Or letting players share maintenance of Focus spells, so one particular caster getting killed didn't make your defense fall apart (would also let less advanced casters participate, by taking the load off the main casters).

Just one of the many things I really regret not getting a chance to try out in Wish.

--Dave (goats!)

Having played Guild Wars, I'm really not sure that "CC" as it's being discussed here is necessary at all. That game has abilities like "Pacifism" (player cannot attack, broken by damage) and "Backfire" (players takes a LARGE amount of damage every time they cast a spell) which hinder an enemy in interesting ways. Also multiple abiltiies cause conditions like "cripple" (half movement speed), "blind" (miss chance increases to 90%) and "dazed" (double spellcasting time, all spells made interruptable by damage).

A few ice enchantments dropped movement speed to 20%, but I do not believe there's a single conventional root. Some abilities made it painful and awkward to cast spells, a few could even silence you but nothing put you to sleep. The closest to a stun is a skill called "Blackout" which completely disables all of a players skills for a short time, but it disables all of the caster's skills as well. and doesn't stop either from attacking or moving. All of these could be stacked, of course, but that required time and effort, usually on the part of multiple players, and offered a lot of options for a smart team to protect themselves.

Mez, root, stun, and fear feel a little shallow and silly after all that.

Tactical depth isn't about specific game mechanics, it's about how many options you have and how much control you have over those options.

Age of Conan solved this very quickly after release. They made it so that when you crouched and moved your collision detection for other players was turned off. You couldn't fight like that and you moved really slowly but it stopped the cockblockers on mammoth mounts jamming up alleys and bridges.

Really, it's such an easy thing to fix and yet still have collision detection working for most of the time.

The story I always heard as to why so few games did collision detection wasn't the exploits but the cpu usage on the servers and the accuracy of fast code. Anyone who's got stuck on a station while seeing their ship 100yards from the nearest outcrop could attest to how inaccurate that code is.

The only place in EQ I ever had a problem with this was the entrance area of Upper Guk. The corridor leading to the zone line (to Innothule Swamp) could be completely blocked by a single Ogre. That was definitely grief potential there.

Edit: the

Asheron's Call had collision detection between mobs and players at all times, and between players and players if both were PvP+.

And it did cause issues where the client and the server would conflict over where a player character was, with interesting warping effects.  Although it wasn't very bad until they implemented 'sticky melee' back in 2000.  Could be fighting 20 mobs in a narrow hallway.  The mobs have collision detection between each other also, and sometimes the client/server would warp one you were fighting from the front into the middle of the pack, and drag you with it.

Still I'd take that system any day vs the 'stack of mobs'/players effect in most other games.

You guys do remember that every casting class had a shrink spell they could apply to people blocking the way, yes?  Trust me, that spell didn't exist at launch.  There was a specific area of Sol b that an ogre or troll could stand in front of and block off access for entire raids going down to kill naggy, or people trying to run to the zone line.

As long as I played, only a few classes (Beastlords and Shamans if I remember right) had the Shrink spell, although shrink potions became commonplace, and shrink items were somewhat rarer but still reasonably common.  And none of these could be applied to a person outside your group, only to yourself or your groupmates.

Regardless, even in the Pre-Kunark era, I never had this problem.  And as noted, grief potential is extremely small if minor steps are taken to make sure it doesn't exist.  If a game doesn't have collision detection because of griefing, then someone's being incompetent in the design.

Ahem. We're talking about MMOG's.

um, didn't they take all collision detection out of EQ on the PvE worlds pretty early on?

And collision detection is only a part of the important stuff.  Rational LoS rules and terrain affects on movement and combat other than passable/impassable are also critical.  And other physics considerations that need to be implemented along with collision dectection are pushing/knockback and taking increased damage and/or chance of being hit if you choose to sacrifice mobility for holding ground.

Another important mechanic to include is some way of having being at the keyboard trump being AFK.  In other words, even a gnome should be able to push past an oger if the oger is AFK.

AC's biggest flaw in their implementation was that they cheaped out on the servers.  There was a LOT of rubberbanding and similar server (or client) playing catchup weirdness in AC, and the vast majority of it was due to inadequate server horsepower, NOT internet lag.  Sticky melee was a vital but lame crutch to try to make up for it.  Lots of people even quit because of the server lag.  I know I did, twice!  :|

Note that lack of collision detection can lead to griefing too. (See: badge vendor in Sunwell Isle + PVP flagged taurens on kodos)

No.

Mark Jacobs confirms two server types still on for launch:

http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/107975096/p8

Elitists who view everything as zero-sum are in an uproar! 

So...it's wow?

Don't get me wrong that's not an insult but that's essentially what this is isn't it?

Server A has: No pvp in newbie zones or in regular levelling zones but pvp in specific RVR designated zones.

Server B has: No pvp in newbie zones but you can PVP everywhere else.

PvP only ever between the two realms.  Now I'm a huge proponent of wow, as mcdonalds as it is they do make a fun diku but with WAR, which I really want to play I was hoping for a fresh alternative in playstyle, something different, exciting. As it stands I keep thinking we're all just gonna get burger king out of this deal.

Ogres in SolB entryway killing everyone when a train hits.  Ahh, memories.

I thought we had long since established that fact.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

To be fair early interpretations of what had been said suggested that both realms shared PvE areas in which they can't attack each other.

In that thread Mark confirms that Orcs can't wander through Dwarf PvE areas or vice versa in the core ruleset. Because that would be stupid. The 'open rvr' server just doesn't have PvE areas according to the thread linked.

So the realms are 'completely' seperate a la daoc? I'm not sure sure it's a good idea to 'halve' your world like that, besides being very non immersive from a design standpoint it just makes you have to double you content.  referenceing wow.....again, I have to say there's a lot of crossover content between alliance and horse, to me that's a good thing, you feel like you're part of a real world. If war is saying it will be more like doac in that the realms will be these seperate entites where you only ever crossover in border realms well that's a big fat 'meh'

More content = more replay value and more expansion potential.  If you think of the realms as separate gated communities, I think it makes for a more interesting gameplay option.  This is especially the case on open pvp servers as invading enemy territory now creates potential for extra dynamics (capital city seige, etc.)

Yeah but it also means that one of the realms will be "finished" and the other not so much.

At least that's the lesson Hibernia taught me about MMOGs.

You're right, on paper. The thing is we all should know by now how these things work. Rather than getting two realms that could be games in and of themselves  you will get two 2/3 gameplay experiences. I prefer this method myself, on paper but having seen it executed time and again I know it's only going to lead to half-assedness(yay new word) and more mediocre realms than were they to share the same world.

One think wow, heck even old school eq did 'right' was making it all one world. I remember those dashes through ironforge, heading into the tram and fighting alliance. I remember taking my dark elf to rivervale(sp?) the halfling town and cackling as i blew the furry footed bastards to hell. Just two small examples but to me if it's gonna be a pvp game, you oppenents need to be more than just 'those guys we see when we enter the danger zone'

at work so can't follow link blah blah blah

so:

pve server = you can't wander into some order zones if you are destro a la Daoc
pvp server =  you can go anywhere 'cept the lowbie starter zones which is more or less WoW?

again i can't follow the thread, but are you positive they are saying the realms are kept apart like in Daoc?

Don't forget sheep.

I believe that on Core servers, you can go to the other side's PvE area.  They can then initiate attacks on you, but you can't initiate a fight with them.  You can, of course, fight back if attacked.  No idea how heal flagging would work in that situation though.   

That wording isn't as clear as Mark says it is, but what I take from it is that if you can see an Orc, you can kill it. This is most satisfactory.



As for the point others made about 'wasting content'. Remember that nothing stops you reusing copies of the enemy noob area as a higher level instance.

The One world of EQ or WoW works great for a PvE game, but it just cocks up the PvP with all the flagging shenanigans and shit. The amazing PvP experience of having my level 12 quest NPC's slaughtered by 70s  :awesome_for_real:


One of the greatest strengths of DaoC was the clear and absolute division of PvE and PvP.


I have no idea what the shit they are doing with WAR. Flip a coin, come back in a week.

It's not inaccurate, it's just simplified. They made stations' collision signatures just a big blob of spheres so people wouldn't get stuck on them and the server wouldn't have to deal with a more detailed model. Collision detection for stationary objects isn't hard to do at all (think of terrain and buildings in standard games), but the big bubble model cuts down on harmful bugs (think of getting stuck in the geometry in a standard game).

If there were no collision detection the spartans would've been dead meat again the almighty zerg. it made terrain doubly important and made the number of bodies as a sort of double edged sword.

As I recalled, from the launch of Darkness Fall to the launch of TOA, the best xp and money grinding zone by far is Darkness Fall... which happens to be a PVP zone with access linked to all 3 realms, openable by a majority in keeps.

You can still op out by avoiding DF, but you really lose out in terms of the heaps of XP and money that could be made in there. In WOW, you can opt out of PVP with much lesser impact on your pve progression via the flag/unflag system on a PVE server - I believe the most common instance of quest npc ganking would be the Barrens by far; in my years of playing Wow I hardly encounter quest NPC being ganked by the other faction outside of the Barrens. This also happens mostly on PVE servers in my experience.

I liked DAOC for the realm artifact sieges, the occupation of keeps and the persistent nature of pvp in the frontiers - that to me is the greatest thing about DAOC. Early DAOC has largely homogenous gears, so the only method to improve your character was through Realm Abilities granted through PVP... and PVP happens only in the frontiers or in DF.  The conflict/contest out there is pretty much persistent - unlike the scant activity I see around most world PVP objectives in WOW now. I still recall with fondness how the call will go out in the realm once news of the other realm moving in on an artifact spreads. Guilds worked with guilds to siege or defeat sieges, and there is a far stronger sense of belonging to a realm than the hollow Ally/Horde faction tags in Wow.

One of the arguments for instancing is to negate one side being swamped by the other as a result of population imbalance... but DAOC deals with it by having 3 factions - on most servers the 2 weaker factions will band up against the strongest realm, and to me this is so much more interesting than artificial set numbers of players facing off in unchanging BG instances.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/38964

Summary:  WAR's "Realm" page will not only allow you to see PvP leaderboards, keep ownership, etc.-  it allows you to see other players' equipment.

...Lum is fighting a lonely battle here.  HIS FORMER COMPANY NO LESS!??!

That's exactly the point, DF is a clearly marked PvP zone. After you enter through this demonic portal, you are free game. If you don't go through it, you are safe. The End. It's a hard line that you choose to cross, not some ambiguous gray overlap that you get through PvP flagging. The same with the frontiers. You enter the frontier, people can kill you. Don't enter, no one can kill you. No confusion, no cheese and always with consent.


While DF was certainly very good PvE return for it's time, it was by no means required or necessary. Which is why it worked as well as it did. Good enough that you'd want it for your own realm, not so good that you actually needed it.

Correct, and a good point usually ignored by most ranters on the subject of daoc population imbalances. (No, I'm not suggesting this fixed the problem entirely on the problem servers)

Having the wrong number of realms is the most often ignored example of a poor design choice in WAR inspired purely by a desire to not be like daoc. (it certainly can't have been inspired by the IP!)

It was more like the two stronger realms would curb stomp the weak one when ever they got bored. I like the odd number of realms just for a pure clusterfuck effect in RvR, but it did little to 'fix' the weaker realm issue.

Amount of content is determined by money and time, not by the model used to divide it between factions.  Claiming that completely segregating it by faction increases replay value is a bit spurious.  You need your players to dive in and feel like there's lots of content, not play through what there is for their side and then think "Well I guess I could reroll..." once they get bored.

Anyway, I predict a whole lot of nothing special for this game.  It's going to be an unfinished unpolished WoW clone that can't compete with the original, it'll go nowhere, and (along with AoC) the first real post-WoW generation of MMOs will have been just another couple of insects beneath Blizzard's boots.

DAoC kept me subscribed for over 5 years.  WoW for about 6 months.  You see everything in WoW on the first trip through and switching sides only gives you different paths around the same area.  In DAoC you see three different pve areas, different class builds, different group dynamics, and different social circles.  I think there's something to be said for having multiple gated realms.  Again, I realize that my tastes are niche, but I lasted a long time in DAoC and it wasn't my first MMO.

Straight from EA Singapore, we have:  September 23rd.

http://www.ea.com.sg/en-sg/games/pc/warhammer/warhammeronline_collectors/

A week after I go to Japan and the day after I start my new job there  :sad:

I don't think this is NDA breaking, but I want to commend Mythic on that their BETA is the most efficient and most professionally run (external) MMO-Beta that I've ever participated in.  From organization and QA issues all the way to customer relations with the beta testers it's been top notch.

I just wanted to put that out there.

Doesn't non-disclosure also include NOT disclosing that you're in a beta? 

The only permitted disclosures at this time are:
1) The fact that there is a Warhammer Online Beta Test currently underway.
2) The fact that you are a member of the Warhammer Online Beta Test.

I stand corrected.

I call bullshit on daoc variety, I tried all three realm and all that changed was the scenery changing from green to pastel to grey/brown. I mean you can call 40 different models of spriggans content, I called it bullshit.

Fair enough.  Just keep in mind that most people didn't play DAoC for the pve.  We all admit that was the weak point.

So were we debating what you should do with a game if you want it to be successful, or what you should do with a game if you want Nebu to play it?


Except WoW is about a billion times more content-rich than DAoC, no matter how many separate level grinds DAoC attaches chunks of it's total content to.

Actually we were debating whether it is possible to make an acceptable mmog with multiple distinct realms, and whether, given the benefit to pvp, it is worth the cost to pve.

Daoc's pve content was on par with its contemporaries despite the split between realms, and as Nebu demonstrates, people didn't quit daoc because of insufficient content. (in fact, they mostly quit because of an additional lump of pve content that was added and available to players of all three realms)


In content terms, this is the really important difference which works in all games with large numbers of classes, CoH, EQ2 and DAoC in particular. One reason I tired of WoW more quickly than any of those three games was that groups felt too samey.

I think this will become more important for WoW people on their second MMOG, as I've always felt that the longer people play mmogs, the less they see them as a world, and the clearer they see the mechanics. Which means making battles play out differently is an enormous help.



Comparing daoc with wow seems odd, since they aim at a different part of the market, but Mythic rather bring it on themselves ofc.

This makes it sound like 'new pve content' was the whole reason TOA was a bomb. That isn't the case. TOA had 2 major problems; the most important of the two is simply that it was, from trials to artifacts and everything in between, done poorly. The other is that it was PVE content that was required to maximize your PVP capabilities. (I could also mention the crippling technical problems of the first couple weeks of TOA, but generally the 'shitty launch is unrecoverable' rule doesn't apply as much to expansions.) If it had been completely awesome in implementation, then the PVE-to-PVP thing would have caused grumbling and probably even some cancellations but not the mass horror that it did end up being.

Compare to the epic instanced quest thingies in Darkness Rising, which were totally awesome. If TOA had been like DR, DAOC wouldn't have stumbled like it did.

*cough*Hibernia*cough*

I played DAoC the month it came out.  I spawned on some sort of brown hill.  I ran over some more brown hills into a brown plain.  There, I killed some dark green frogs with my character (dressed in brown).  I never talked to anyone and after killing 20 or so frogs I logged out and cancelled my account.

And then I was off, to my next adventure!

The only real difference in Hibernia's content was lack of art assets. They still had camps of monsters to kill for XP, which for much of DAOC's existence was all there was to PVE content anyway. Yeah their dungeons sucked. So did Midgard's for the most part, especially early on. In the 'end game' of leveling from 40 to 50 in the early pre-expansion days, they had, frankly, an easier time with their PBAE fin groups anyway. Midgard didn't even get PBAE until what, a year in? And Albs were too dumb to figure out how to use it for a long time.  :awesome_for_real:

WoW's progression to level cap is significantly shorter than DAoC's, but you're right: the latter's grind exceeded the available content, whereas WoW's has room to spare.

If only part of your game is fun and the other part is a grind designed to get you "to the fun" then you're doing it wrong.

If you make a primarily PVP game yet shoehorn players into a PVE grind then you're doing it wrong.

Let's see how WAR does on that.

Most people moved to DAoC from EQ or UO, and stood about for the first few weeks telling each other how awesome for reals the spell effects were.

WoW is prettier, there, I said it. The game that came out several years later is prettier.

WAR will be prettier than DAoC too.


The grind point is valid, but again, daoc had a short grind for the era, and mythic people have since said publically that later games have proven that the grind should be shorter still. They've also openly recognised that the ToA grind was a bad idea.

Every mmog generation has had a shorter grind than the previous one - there is no reason to expect that this will change - and equally no reason to expect developers to ever work out that grinding to the fun is a shitty design concept.

Hibernia wasn't itemized until the game was out for a few weeks at least. 

But the argument above was "ZOMG DAoC had plenty of content when compared to the other games out at the time!!!1!", which certainly wasn't true for Hibernia.  In the past when I made that argument I was told "Well the other realms had content and Hibernia was a pansy elf realm anyways, so the joke's on you newb".  If the real answer is that the rest of the game lacked content like Hibernia did (no items, 1 type of thing to kill repeated for all 40 levels) then I can't imagine how anyone could make the argument that DAoC had even remotely close to the same pve content level that, lets say, EQ did at the time.

I can't imagine why someone would argue that either. DAOC had crap for PVE content for *months*, in all realms. I did forget about the itemization issue - Midgard had some of that too but not to the extent of Hibernia. I think Alb dungeons were all itemized at or shortly after release.

DAoC did have crap for pve content.  Itemization was poor, the grind was long, and there wasn't much to do after level 30 early on.  I think the game survived primarily due to the endgame.  The itemization didn't matter back then because its effect on the end game was small.  Hell, it was their primary attempts to add content (particularly pve content) that drove the core subscribers, including myself, away. 

Just for the record, fully half of this thread has been "DAoC pve content was like totally just fine and stuff".  In fact, even your name was thrown into the mix, Nebu:

I'll say it again, DAOC PVE was utter drek but you HAD to do it to get to the 'fun' PVP endgame.

If WAR follows suit it is going to die a horrible lingering death of obscurity.

Was it just adding PVE content at all, or the implementation of that content that did it?

Maybe everyone else here remembers EQ and AC PvE more fondly then I do.

I don't mean to say I ever chose daoc for its pve, or that it is fine in a modern context, but just that getting knickers in a twist because daoc pve isn't as good as EQ2 or CoH doesn't make much sense. I'd be disappointed if Mythic haven't learnt from the likes of EQ2/CoH and refined the pve experience, just as they learnt from EQ/AC with DAoC.

Verant-era EQ always had better PvE than same-era DAoC, and EQ only improved (barring one incredibly retarded expansion) while DAoC got worse.
EQ pvp on the team war Zeks was more fun than DAoC too. :raspberry:

More than anything it was

1) that the new content felt mandatory
2) there were literally dozens of horrible spawn timer based quests that had to be completed almost sequentially to reach the new effective level cap.
3) equipment was given xp, you had to level up your sword, and in some cases your sword would only gain xp from specific mobs.

I really can't believe how stupid number 3 sounds when I write it down.

Would #1 have bothered you if the new content was actually fun to do?

It would bother me.  :oh_i_see:

As several of the above posts point out, EQ had far more and far better PvE at the time of DAoC's launch than DAoC had.  Or even at it's own launch for that matter.  DAoC survived launching with a lame and limited PvE experience for a couple of reasons. 
 
   1) What they did deploy (mostly) worked.  To a much higher percentage and degree than EQ at the time.

   2) The lure of meaningful PvP.  EQ's PvP experience had proven to be too much of an afterthought.  DAoC promised and delivered much better.

   3) Unlike Sony/Verant, Mythic didn't make a habit of kicking their customers in the teeth then bragging about it (as long as you weren't an archer).

The flip side was, due to the lacking PvE experience, DAoC was just merely successful, rather than outrageously successful as it might have been had they been able to invest as much effort (and yes, money) into the PvE experience as they did RvR.  They deliberately chose or were forced to limit their scope, so they built their business model and business accordingly rather than biting off far more than they could chew, and released a successful game rather than an incomplete mess.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/successful-mmo-design-corrupts-new-ideas-says-warhammer-dev (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/successful-mmo-design-corrupts-new-ideas-says-warhammer-dev)

Hopefully taken a bit out of context?

How did Paul Barnett have time to give this interview when he's moving to Texas?

... of course, the Monkees were incredibly successful in their own right. It's not like they failed horribly (until the end of the Monkees, when they tried to not be the Monkees anymore).

To further torture the analogy, it seems like Paul wants his band to make pop music but without listening to current pop music because that would influence them. While that's a great artistic goal, will the buyers of pop music head out and buy Paul and Co.'s new album if its too far from what they expect from the genre?

... this may be the most abstract post I've ever made while still trying to be serious...

Meh, hopefully not.  I know that's the only way I'll be interested in the game.  He's definitely right that imitating WoW will not lead to anything but mediocrity, both in sales and in product.  A little bit of focused creativity with people that can actually develop a non-buggy PoS is certainly needed in the genre...

I don't think it's wow's fault that designers at mythic are unoriginal, I mean they did make EQ2.0 afterall.....I mean DAOC

There's a very big difference between imitating WoW and iterating on what works well in WoW, or any other game for that matter. 

DAoC was many things, but EQ2.0 was not one of them.

I would have put up with it, but wouldn't have liked it.

PvE was an occaisional social activity - and could be fun when it came in short sharp interesting encounters like the Dragon raid; 30 minutes to setup, 30 minutes to run an encounter based mostly on player skill (omg), then all back to cornwall station for tea, medals, and respec stones before heading off for an evening in RvR.

But I certainly didn't want to be pveing for weeks at a time because of arbitary additional master/champion/whatever levels Mythic insisted on adding every year.

Yeah, it was closer to EQ0.9...but_with_PvP!  :awesome_for_real:

Judging DAoC for its pve would be like judging EQ for its pvp.   

Except for the fact that you pretty much had to PVE in Dark Age.

I never claimed to be good at analogies.

OH  EM  GEE 

Is this guy really a professional developer?  Can anyone name a SINGLE profession where refusing to observe what works for other people or learning from their mistakes is anything but egomaniacal lunacy?  Being open to doing something different or trying something new is all well and good, but ONLY in the context of understanding what has and hasn't worked in previous attempts. 

From a related news blurb on the same page, same guy says:

Pot, meet kettle.


My hopes/expectations for WAR just tanked.  Not that I'd mind a different quest system, or something really radical like GET RID OF LEVELS AND CLASSES AND GRIND.  But deliberately cultivated ignorance is just begging, no, DEMANDING fail.

I dunno, I agree with him on this.  WoW obviously did a lot of things right, and that's worth studying.  But frequently the design discussion for most people starts and ends with "Game X (the #1 of the genre) did it this way, so let's do that, but with (insert minor twist here)."  No attempt to examine why they did it that way, and what contribution (if any) that particular feature made to that success.  Which is all well and good and par for the course in the industry, except that since you don't want to examine where the magic comes from you have no idea if your minor twist will fuck it up.

He's not saying not to observe what works, just not to take it as set in stone perfection.  Now, as for whether he's a good enough analyst to actually pick the WoW magic apart and figure out how to improve the secret sauce, I have no idea.

--Dave

No he's saying don't play the game because it's flawed and I don't want those flawed ideas in my game. He's pretty clear on that.

IF SCHILD IS PAUL BARNETT, WHY AREN'T WE ALL IN BETA??? 

In all fairness observing what works playing WoW rather than actually develop the game you're supposed to be developing ... well, that didn't work out too well for Vanguard.

There's also thin line between learning what works, and just copying what you think works because it's easier that coming up with your own (equally workable) ideas. I suspect in the game development the risk of falling for the copycat approach is pretty high and that ultimately does result in less variety.

I would think the ideal path would be to figure out your design, then take a close look at other games to make sure it hasn't been done better, or shown how not to do it.  Not looking to other games to design your own is great.  (More of this, please.)  Ignore other games completely at your own peril.

The strange thing here is that I might actually like some of his ideas, especially another quote from the releated articles list on that page: ""Smart people with bright ideas are more important than creatives".  Now, without any context for that quote, I'm pretty much guessing what he means.  But to me, it rings true in the sense that ideas are relatively easy to come by, the hard parts are nailing all the details down and getting the implementation right.  Those take intelligence, discipline, and tons of hard work, not blue-sky-creative-thinking-outside-of-the-box nonsense.

If that is indeed what he means, then that would make him kind of like the anti-Raph creative.  Raph had/has wonderfully creative ideas, but his head is in the clouds and his feet are definitely NOT planted on terra firma.  With no basis in reality and apparently no discipline at designing for the real world or actually, you know, finishing the development of a design to the point where it actually works, his good creative ideas largely get wasted. 

The problem is, the article says Barnett discourages his team from playing the competition and quotes him specifically as refusing to check out the competition himself.  That reeks of artistic hubris, trying to avoid having his personal creations tainted with the influence of others.  In the context of pure art, MAYBE that is valid, .01% of the time.  But almost every real artist learns from others rather than inventing a whole new art in their heads with no external influence. 

All of the arguments defending this guy in the past few posts are true, and completely beside the point.  It is absolutely a problem when your design team is ao close-minded or entrenched that they can't even consider an alternative solution to something that worked well in WoW.  That path leads to the same derivative schlock that we all complain about so much.  And any designer that takes a system from one game and implements it the same way in his own without understanding EXACTLY how it will fit in his game is an idiot.  If all this guy has is close-minded idiots on his team, then ignoring the existing industry best practices and trying to build everything from scratch is not going to solve the problem!  What he needs to do in that horrible event is to ditch the team and get some real designers in who are ready and willing to take the state-of-the-art and advance it.  NOT put blinders on everyone and repeat all the mistakes of the past through willful ignorance.

As an aside, isn't it possible that the reason it took 3 months for him to argue his team into doing something completely sideways from how it was done in WoW to great success, is because his idea really isn't as good as WoW's?    Without a lot more info on all the details, of course, we can't judge that, but the possibility is definitely worth keeping in mind.  No matter HOW much you hope WAR will be the one game to rule them all.

Didn't we already establish that game failed? :awesome_for_real:

They've all obviously played WoW before.  The point is that if you play it every day you'll start to see MMORPG design through tunnel vision.  That's partially why we ended up with LOTRO and AoC.  And partially why both of those games suck.

Of course, they see the money hats that WoW print and from a business standpoint want to emulate that success.  problem is, you can't do WoW better than WoW, or even as well as WoW.  The inevitable flaws in your game are magnified 10 fold thanks to the unfortunate comparison between your product and WoW.  Solution?  Do whatever you can to separate your game from WoW.  If you can release a decent game that is different, you will be better off than if you release a decent game that is similar.  This is the only reason Eve has managed to do well at all.

Not that I think War is going to be anything different.  I'm sure we'll get the microgrind in quests, NPCs that exist to hold exclamation marks over their heads, PvP points that you buy gear with, and all that stuff WoW does better than you.  This little quote by Barnett does give me a little hope though.

Nah Barrows dungeon in Albion wasn't itemized for 6 - 8 weeks IIRC. Didn't matter - PvE was horrid in DAoC until Darkness Falls got set up and running well, and it was fun for a while. Catacombs task dungeons were dull but effective. ToA was utter grind tripe.

This.

Back before WoW, everyone sat about having exactly this conversation about Everquest.

The only games worth a damn between Everquest and WoW were those that attempted to do something other than what EQ did. It took a long time and a lot of money for WoW to come along and out-EQ the orignal EQ, it'll take longer and more money for someone to out-EQ WoW. There are better things for most developers to be doing.

And yet, pretty much all those games that attempted to do something other than EQ ended up repeating one or more of the exact same mistakes their predecessors did.  Given that, I conceed.  All game devs should ignore anything that works for fear of it contaminating their pure visions.  It's a pointless argument anyway, since, with the exception of WoW (and maybe LOTR), history has proven that most developers are incapable of learning from others (or even their own) mistakes anyways!  :drill:

I dunno, I think Turbine learned a great deal.  They went from horrid games of utter goatshit to LOTRO which is to me a polished, fairly fun and accurate simulation of Middle Earth.

Yeah. Whether one likes the game design or not, it's at least well polished and their production values definitely went up in terms of art, music, etc. Hopefully its success lets them move onto a better funded/prepared for attempt at an Asheron's Call sequel.

I can't wait for Asheron's Call 2!

*snicker*

Now see, that's just evil.

don't copy WoW but for Christ's sake copy its advancements.  I.e. fast exp, fast travel, hearthstone, easy UI, easy Quest source, easy PvP entry, etc.  These are basic mechanics that don't need to vanilla your game.  Give your new car four doors and concentrate on the gilding and performance to distinguish it.  AoC and LotRO gave us a car with gull-wing doors.  Don't mess with designs the market is saying already work well.

And DAoC was before WoW -- it invented (I thought) skill socketing, RvR and a lot else.  It's sheer skullfuckery for someone to say don't be influenced by WoW. 

I would have though t it was Paul's job to ensure his title *was* original.  Rely on WoW's basic improvements, and let the great Mr.Barnett be sure the title becomes unique in non-game breaking ways.

I think every game should have addons like WOW. 

Given the track record of WoW and every other MMO, ever, I'd rather they make a game that was influenced too much by WoW than one that wasn't influenced by it enough.

Hmm Gore must be new here.  :drill:

the game sucks? Holy shit!

HEY GUYZ! WOW HAMMER SUCKS!!!? OH MY GOD, YOU KILLED WOW HAMMER!

WTF. i would rather continue to beta test AoC or go back to a 5+ year old mmo then play this pile of shit.

My only hope. is when EA finally smells what Mythic is cookin... that they dont flip up the lid to see the giant steaming pile of shit this game truly is. That this shit demon doesnt hurt KOTOR:O

For fuck sake.

There is no way you aren't a gimmick account or a psychology student writing a paper.

You know back in the days of modems right? 33.6kbps gaming. Heady days of lagged out QuakeWorld. We used to joke that there were so many packets getting lost that they were having an entire other game with them somewhere.

I think grunk might be those lost packets and they've developed AI along the way. Well... maybe not AI as such... self-awareness.. no... er... well, posting abilities anyway  :awesome_for_real:

In 2000 TARDnet was brought online, in 2008 it became self-aware.

I'm fairly sure that at the end of the day and when this is all over, if things don't go well, the person we're going to blame is Paul Barnett. Mostly because he can't keep his trap shut. Someone needs to shield him from talking to the public Ever Again. And by shield I mean fire, ship to Eastern Europe, and let him work with that ex-SWG fuck. He's a walking disaster.

And if things do go well, Paul will get zero credit.

He is right fucked.

I think people are reading far too much into this Barnett thing. Unless you know how this attitude plays out on a day-by-day basis in the office it's impossible to judge. Obviously there are merits to paying attention to the competition, but also merits to not paying too close attention.

It worked for WOW no?

WoW payed very close attention to its competition. Close enough to see most of the stupid and avoid it.


I think this conversation has come full circle with that  :uhrr:

He works for GW. He doesn't need to make money or achieve anything gaming related to keep his job. He just has to have a boner for stupid pewter models and IP lawsuits.

re: paying attention to WoW.

Anyone who has read the non-NDA breaking information releases will be aware that WAR is *heavily* influenced by WoW. WoW might have copied art direction from WAR, but WAR selected the same UI model, skill model, quest model etc that WoW lifted off of prior games. It seems fairly obvious they chose that beacuse of WoW.

At this point I'd imagine WAR *really* needs managers shouting 'Stop adding things that feel exactly like WoW kthxplz!'.

Anyday now a new MMO will come out that is original, fun and breaks the mold of what is supposed to be MMO's.

Yep, any day now...

Too late; in this day and age you could have just basic mechanics revolve around whacking foozles for xp, and people would say "gee they're so shamelessly ripping off WoW"

Er, all MMOs since UO have worked that way.  Its like complaining at every annual car show that the companies' new models still have steering wheels and tires.  That's the basis the industry works off of, and you aren't suddenly going to see MMOs where there is no UI and you have to type in spontaneous haikus to activate abilities while dancing on a NES-style track and field pad. 

Barnett is the asshole at the end of every conference call looking for things going wrong.  Calling out stuff that hasn't come up yet.  Every time there's a progress report, Barnett is the guy who asks about something else and why it isn't done yet.  Even if there a plan for it.  Based on that little bit of public self-admission I expect Barnett is the guy stirring up churn, swirl and generally being a really negative a-hole.  Never satisfied.  AND he feels that's productive -- keeping "everyone on their toes" by generally stressing everyone out.  "Keeping the pressure on".

Every software project gets a personality like this.  It just depends if there is someone higher up to tell them to STFU or allowing them to go. I expect for WAR because Barnett is the GW partner rep he's been a class 1 dick since inception.  I feel sorry for that team and wish them well at launch.

yeah, because fuck forbid. you have to fucken manage hate, fucken heal... fucken drop a buff.. or a fucken nuike...


For fuck sake, addons are the worst fucken thing i have ever seen. Maybe you fuckers should get a program to play it for you...

Or maybe I just like to customize my UI the way I like it? 

Addons have good points and bad ones.  Some are great, like ones that allow you to arrange your information the way you like it, or set up hotbars where and how you want them.  Others, I don't much care for.  Like you say, threat meters are something I've never liked, since they take the skill of learning and managing your threat and condense it into 'watch bar' and I wished Blizzard would break them like they did Decursive, not include them in their own UI.  Of course at times there's a fine line between 'convenience' and 'removing appropriate challenge'.  One example of something I didn't like them breaking was the autobuff mods that would buff you whenever you moved.  Buffing 'can' be a skill and part of the difficulty of the game, but I posit that it shouldn't be because...really, it's not a fun part of the game, and challenge can be added in ways that don't irritate the living shit out of classes with buffs.

How do you manage something you can't get proper feedback on? Maybe we can hide the health bars too, so people can develop the skill of managing those better?  :oh_i_see:

If a game is about numbers and stats, hiding those numbers is always a bad idea.

I agree with Grunk.  Games nowadays coddle there players too much and remove all the challenge.  with these types of mechanics, how do you separate the skilled playas from the noobs?

Some things I would like to see:

1.  All skills dependent on positionals.  If you can't be bothered to move to the proper position, you shouldn't be able to attack, heal, move etc...

2.  An option to auto-kick from party and guild any non-tank party member who gains aggro. 

3.  Awesome 1 off power moves that are only available by farming literally thousands of mobs and obtain various rare components from large raiding dungeons.  These power moves should have awesome graphics and complete devastate noobs in PvP.

4.  The entire removal of all interface.  Who wants that shit on the screen?  It ruins immersion.  Players should just memorize what their keys do, or better yet, control their character through their sheer force of will. 

 

You mean like Uncharted Waters did?  :oh_i_see:

And how to manage something with no proper feedback on? With lack of full information you either play conservatively, or take risks. Lot of game mechanics revolve around such decision making done with the lack of detailed feedback -- picture yourself regular poker where you know exactly what everyone's hand is... not much of exciting gameplay left there, is it?

Threat management is similar. A good player can reasonably estimate how much damage they can deal, and keep it right beneath threat level. It's part of that mythical 'skill' thing the MMO are supposedly lacking. A bad player can either estimate this badly or don't understand the concept at all, and cause mess with potential group wipes. And since people don't like to lose/wipe, and because lot of players are morons unable to grasp how the game works and cause the wipe to whole group in the process? Cue development of UI crutches that show the stupid people exactly what they're allowed to do. It's not improvement to gameplay, but rather removal of it to provide extra safety net.

Pretty much all games are about numbers and stats. But not having all these numbers right in your face doesn't seem to ruffle feathers of anyone but conditioned MMO gamers.

Welcome to about every fighting game ever developed.

(my green is greener)

I know.  And those fighting games often have 50-100+ unique situational skills, abilities and items to choose from per character instead of high/med/low - kick/punch.  (And since it's what the cool kids are doing... :oh_i_see:)

There's MMOs out there that really have 50 unique situational skills, that don't mostly amount to "hit for little damage" "hit for med damage" "hit for lot damage"? Because otherwise.... count with me:
... 60 or so moves for a random Tekken character. Not including generic blocks, counters, dodges and that proverbial kick/punch.

i had a vision of a field of Yoshimatsu's charging across a valley and slaying all. :drill:

I've mapped my F2 key to kick Grunk in the balls until I release it.  Probably gonna be the best keymap I've used.

Wonder if that attack is positional?

That's a bullshit comparison and you know it. Playing poker without proper feedback would be having a 10 and not knowing what the scope of cards your opponent could have is. Maybe he has 12 aces! But go ahead and bet anyway, even though you have no idea what the odds behind the game are.

MMO companies by and large are shitty about documenting their game mechanics and providing the feedback you need to make spec decisions, etc - sometimes even shit as simple as 'will this heal be big enough to heal that guy'. Sometimes if you're really lucky they not only don't tell you shit about what your abilities do, they don't give you any way to respec when you find out that their flowery descriptive names don't do shit for describing what things do or their relative power.

Some information is too basic and crucial to be obfuscated.  Other things should be hidden in order to maintain the lack of knowledge that allows risk-taking and skill to come into play.  Threat is one of the latter, it's not basic or crucial and we did without it for years, the difference between people who knew how to estimate their threat and those that didn't was what made the difference between a good DPS or not.  It wasn't impossible to do well without that information, it just took players who could estimate it well and knew when it was worth pushing a little harder and taking the risk and when that was a bad idea.  See: every fight in EQ, except rooted mobs and those with special agro mechanics.  At least up until the point I stopped playing.

One of things Mythic (or Tweety at least) claimed to learn from ToA was that hiding the detail of character stats and capabilities  is bad, but hiding the detail of how the environment works can be fun.

And to be fair to them, Mythic have always published complete detail on stat forumlae and skill info before and since the ToA debacle.

As for skills and mechanics of the environment, I guess I can agree that there is fun to be had in reverse engineering scenarios/mobs.

And these do these do anything besides "damage other player" (besides a few counters/blocks)?  And do they change during the course of the game? Because if not I wouldn't really characterize them as unique.  But point taken.

One of them is called 'Medium Power Punch'.

That is all you need to know.

Now compare the complexity of those EQ fights and the current WoW fights.

Risk does not always have to equal gambling/chance. Which is what a hidden system amounts to. The current threat meters still let you push your threat, a lot fights it's crucial all the DPS are on a feather thin line of threat to ensure they beat out the enrage timer or whatnot. The risk is how tight do you ride the line. Despite meters, it's still very easy to blow over a threat limit and pull aggro. The difference now is you actually know you are getting close.

Threat shouldn't be a question of "will I push over?" it should be a question of "should I push over?".


As for Card analogies, a hidden threat system is more like playing BlackJack with your own cards face down. The more cards you get, the closer you should be to 21, so you can guesstimate it, right?  Oops, did you bust?  :oh_i_see:

Don't think so, the game doesn't hide your damage output from you, does it? You can reasonably estimate it, and you know that the more of it you dish out, the closer you are to crossing the line and grabbing the agro. Seriously, isn't the point of these threat meters exactly this, to remove the guesswork and tell you specifically how much damage you can do while remaining safe from what otherwise would be consequence of wrong decision?

I, personally, am an expert at reading combat text as it scrolls through my chat window at a rate of 60 lines a second.  That being said, other retards have a harder time with it.  Pansies.

I said "detailed feedback". Detailed and proper can be two different things, i.e. in some games the "proper" (in order to maintain gameplay) feedback is one that is on purpose not detailed. Hence example of poker -- here the 'proper' feedback is one that's on purpose not complete, and by increasing the detail of information that's avaialble to you, the large chunk of the original gameplay is removed. Exactly like the threat meters remove the guessing game of where you might be on the threat list. With this explanation in mind can you now specifically tell me why it's a bullshit comparison because no, i don't know it.

But people keep telling me MMOs are numbers and spreadsheets games, and every good MMO player has it all worked out, the DPS they can do and the other shit the game spells out to them in these cute tooltips. To the point where there's nerd wars over class dps balance, with graphs and shit. Was that all a lie in the end, and they really have no clue if there's no coloured bars from Progress Quest in front of them to show it?

But in this case, how the hell do gamers manage to play other MMOs than WoW with the threat add on, and not just wipe all over the place?

So.... what you are saying is you agree with Grunk?   :grin:

... i'll be in the shower, doing the jim carrey routine :uhrr:

Except that in many cases in DAOC, having the data was actually misleading. I wish I could remember the exact details of the situation, but back when I had Pendragon boards access, there was a point at which it came out that the way something was documented on the site was leading people to incorrect conclusions and Mackey basically said "Who cares." Then there was all the 'low' 'medium' 'high' descriptions on melee styles, which turned out to not really reflect reality at all. I *hope* Mythic has learned their lesson about documentation, but we shall see. Incorrect documentation is worse than no documentation in a lot of ways.

Before WoW: Small # of MMO raiders.
After WoW: Much bigger # of MMO raiders.

All threat meters (in WoW anyway) do is add up information that is available to the player already. It just crunches numbers. A threat meter is the equivalent of counting cards in blackjack. You know how many 10s have gone by. You don't know anything that the game isn't revealing to you in some way - you don't know if your next attack is going to crit and send you over the threshold anyway. It is in no way telling you what is in someone's hand.

Now that EQ thing that told you exactly what that mob you killed was going to drop? That was like what you're describing.


People play other MMOs? But seriously, for me at least, in the other games I've played, either tanks are so sticky noone is ever taking aggro off of them anyway (hello CoH) or the pace of combat is slower and there's much more time to react to changes (LotRO, DAOC, etc. etc. etc.) In WoW, it can often be 'pull aggro, wipe raid'. Other games are more forgiving about that.

But it doesn't report the damage your tank is doing, nor is the display of information exactly user friendly in anything but the smallest of PvE environments. You don't know if your tank missed his last attack, you don't know if he crit with his shield slam. Guesstimating only takes everyone so far.

The mini game of hidden threat only dumbs down the actual encounter, since you can't tune the content to specific levels of threat or require multiple people to maintain said levels. Making threat a visible mechanic turns it into another workable variable in a fight, which makes for a more interesting encounter. Also makes the game infinitely less frustrating and more transparent.


Again, why don't we just hide health and mana bars too? People know how much they have total from their character sheets, they know how much damage has been inflicted, they should be able to guesstimate it, right?  Since the guessing game is such a 'wonderful' part of the game play  :oh_i_see:

Hmm yes which is somewhat the point -- there's uncertainly element which creates room for player's decision to either play it 'safe' at the cost of dealing less damage, or to take more risky approach.

Having it invisible forces the players to estimate and make decisions based on these estimations. Having it in the open basically turns the encounter into situation where the players are explicitly told "each of you, press your buttons this fast but no faster". You really consider the former of these (decision making vs following instructions) dumbed down, and the latter more interesting? After all you say it yourself that it renders the encounters more predictable... and i thought following the instructions to predictable results is what's called either "the grind" or "having the boss on farm status" and both are actually disliked as "boring necessity to gear up for next tier", or whathaveyou.

Again, some games do it. And it doesn't seem to get people's underwear in a twist that "oh gosh i'm not told precisely if my character can stand 2 more hits, or maybe 3" ... so maybe it's not such crucial necessity as some believe, and as such makes it not so good argument why it's a must to have the threat levels shown.

I think the argument being made and not paying attention to can be simplified as.

Threat gen is not a 'fun' game mechanic even if it is challenging.

There are other more fun ways to make encounters challenging that don't involve paying close attention to threat gen.

That's the thing, having the threat visible doesn't remove the choice, it only expands it.

The "This fast and only faster" only happens because threat IS invisible. You can't ask any more of reasonable players but the rough guesstimations and you must make the line to cross fairly forgiving. You can't have systems where you need tanks on precise threat orders, you can't have sudden drops or gains or dumps of threat. You can't have threat swapping or temporary threat pulls to contain and control things.

With a invisible system, you either make threat a non-issue or you frustrate your player base. The only question you can ask is "will I go over?".

With a visible threat system, you make threat part of the fight. The question isn't simply just "will I go over?" it's "should I go over?". You can expand the encounter, make threat a new pivot to work around. You have endurance fights, you have DPS races, you have mitigation battles. Now you can have threat control as a true part of the encounter, instead of a vague idea of 'don't pull agg!'


What I'm saying the only reason the threat mini game seems like it's more 'interesting' is because threat itself is such a simple mechanic as it is, and it's simple because it's hidden and invisible. You can use it and expand on it and encounters if you are allowed to actually SEE it. The more recent and complex encounters in WoW's raid game only work because Blizz assumes (and rightly) that most people do have threat meters installed. With out them, some of the fights would be nearly impossible, and certainly FAR more frustrating for anyone attempting them.

I really don't see where you're drawing this conclusion from. The threat being visible or not does not change the basic mechanics of either being on top of the threat list or not, it just makes it easier for the player to control if they're on top of that list, or not. Nothing in it being visible makes it a new pivot to work around -- it already *is* the pivot players work around, even when it's not spelt out to them with colourful bars

The question is never "should i go over?" in these encounters, because they're designed in way that ensures that going over by someone not built to take it = deaths of squishies and/or wipe. If the design is at some point changed to allow or even require for players to indeed grab the top spot in the threat list, then that by no means hinges on the threat list being visible -- such visibility would (again) simplify the encounter but is not required; the players are perfectly capable of grabbing that threat spot as it is now without this detailed info, as evidenced by many who do it, usually to the chargrin of people around them.

Can you give some specific example of that? That is, what's done to these more recent encounters? I'm asking because the strategy guides for Sunwell bosses and such still boil down to "have tank(s), and no one dare to dps beyond the threat of these tanks" ... so there's probably some intricacies here that both these guides and i'm missing. Or is it simply the fight durations before the guaranteed wipe due to enrage/whatever are tailored to presumption the players will know exactly what their threat is, and dps as fast as the meters let them?

It's been necessary to have tanks on close threat orders since the Avatar of War, who would occasionally take out a tank in a single round when it got lucky regardless of the healing applied (it's max possible damage output in a 'round' was higher than the max possible HP of tanks at the time) and if your second tank wasn't chasing the main tank's heels on the threat list, you could lose half your DPS (or worse, your cleric chain) before regaining control of the fight.  Especially since this would mean he would turn and start riposting for 2/3 of the health of melee damage dealers.  Tank swapping isn't new at all either, as there were fights dating back to Gates of Discord (or maybe further back, I don't recall exactly) that required tanks to swap when certain events (sometimes at predictable intervals, sometimes with unpredictable timing) occured.  Really, just about all of the mechanics you said you 'can't have' exists in EQ in raid content that varies in age from Gates of Discord all the way to the Serpent's Spine (and presumably beyond).

So far, I haven't seen a fight that could not be done without threat meters in WoW.  Nothing I have either seen personally or read the detailed mechanics of is something that simply could not be accomplished otherwise, and from what I've read of the Sunwell fights there's nothing there that couldn't be accomplished with skilled understanding of your abilities and your tank.  Would they be more difficult?  Sure.  Would considerably less people be capable of doing them?  Absolutely.  Why?  Because so many of the people raiding in WoW simply don't have the skill, level of judgement and ability to estimate the fight conditions that it would require.  Slog's point above on there being a vastly higher number of raiders now is absolutely true, and it is because of this, because WoW raiding requires much less personal ability from each individual involved - all that's really needed is the ability to follow orders and use whatever addons are developed to make up for the individual's inability to master their abilities and understand the rest of their companions' abilities.

Here's an important factor though: knowing your tank.  Being able to push the envelope on DPS in EQ, for example, was dependent on your familiarity with your tank's agro levels.  In my guild we had several tanks, and depending on who was tanking the DPS felt differently as to how much damage they could do.  This was very visible on post-raid parses where if our tank that was best at keeping agro was tanking, the raid's total DPS would be noticeably higher, while another tank would see the raid lose a considerable amount of total DPS because they had to limit themselves.  The difference between that and with threat meters?  The players don't need skill and an intimate understanding of their own abilities and their tank's to know when to stop attacking - they only need to watch a bar and turn off attack when it exceeds a certain point. 

Furthermore, there's no more interesting mechanic I can think of that can be integrated into the fight with this information.  I may be missing something, and if I am, give me an example...but all I see as a variable here is, 'what point on the bar do I need to stop increasing my threat at?'  That's it, there's no need for judgement or thought, just a certain number/location on the meter that I'm not allowed to exceed.  The number can vary depending on the situation, but as the individual player, all I need to know is, 'raid leader says not to go over X threat'.

EDIT: Fuck; Nevermind.

Off the top of my head. http://www.wowwiki.com/Gurtogg_Bloodboil would be nigh unworkable without threat meters.

That means the game design is broken.

Without a meter you have to learn to estimate threat. Estimating threat is a skill that can be honed. Looking at a meter is not.

In general I think a good rule of game design is that fewer meters is better. A meter is less immersive, draws your attention away from the onscreen action to the meter, and makes the game about managing a little graphical rectangle.

If there are encounters that require threat meters to work then WOW has some shitty design. Period.

In FFXI you manage threat based on feel, which you develop by being smart and paying attention. Works for me.

And once again you all miss the point.

Nobody but you chucklefucks wants to do that.  No sane person who plays MMOs for FUN. (Yes, they're out there.) wants to do that.  Making things so simple is why WoW's got the number of folks it does. Since it's a business, yes that matters.

It always amuses me to watch folks who are skilled or talented at something berate others who lack that skill.. but then fail and whine about things they lack skill at. 

It also requires getting past level 10.  Not really a good example since most people enjoy fun in their MMO...

I don't really like the threat meters.  I'm not an RP whore, but there's a level of immersion I still yearn for in these games, and playing the UI mini-game isn't fun for me.  I don't like knowing that Monster_01 Hates Bob twice as much as Bill, but only 1/3 as much as Marshall.  If I cast Spell_02 it will make the mob hate me as much as Bob.

I much prefer the days of "I'll just slow this guy and then... oh shit, agro! get it off!"  I understand that's not "fun" to most folks anymore, and I'll probably never really see it in games again.  That's fine, I guess, but it strikes me as one more wall as the game boxes you in on your fun-path.  MMO's are becoming more and more structured, and it stops being a virtual world to explore and more like a hand-held tour.

Catering to the stupid, the unskilled, and the lazy is always a great way to make lots of money, because most people are one or all of those things.  None of my comments are about what makes a more financially successful game, simply what makes a more fun and interesting game.  Reducing player decisions and input as much as possible don't make for a fun and interesting game, but they do make for one that requires very little from its players.

You might be missing the point yourself there  :-) I don't personally consider the whole threat thing as great concept... my point is rather, if there's any proverbial FUN to that particular gameplay aspect, it's that whole uncertainty/decision making. So removal of it = no FUN left in the whole threat thing, all that's left is "press button as fast as you're told to". Now, if you'll tell me otherwise and that "everybody but chucklefucks" consider it FUN to have this uncertainty/decision making removed then i won't argue that... but it does make me curious what exactly is FUN in such arrangement, and i'd appreciate some light shed on it.

I'd argue very few people actually know why WOW got the number of folks it does. I certainly can't claim i do. It really ain't as simple as making things so simple, otherwise their subscription base would be torn apart by a dozen equally 'simple' copycats at this point.

Not to mention, if the game is made in manner that forces people to utilize 3rd party UI add-ons just to stand the chance to beat an encounter (if what Fordel says is correct) ... that's hardly "making things so simple", ain't it?

Which is why its being put in baseline...


and we have come full circle again  :awesome_for_real:


What the hell was this thread about originally anyways?

I do I do!  :grin: j/k. But every factor that could have contributed has been discussed to death. Simplicity of experience alongside that experience actually, like, working at launch were definitely big factors.

Not that the game doesn't absolutely require 3rd party UI add-ons unless you get to a level of play that would have you as a type of person who'd seek out UI add-ons to maximize their experience. Yea there's that guy who bought a T6 level 70 off eBay who'll complain they're not able to keep up on the BT raid they managed to lie their way into. But they're as statistically irrelevant as the "casual PUG Raider" demographic. :wink:

As to Threat, it's not that the lack of threat meters makes something risky and fun to figure out. It's that the lack of display of the statistics rolling along in the background make it a foregone conclusion that a UI mod would be developed for it. That makes encounters easier, which forces Blizzard (and others) to narrow the gap between success and failure, which makes that mod now a requirement, which in turn makes Blizzard roll it into their default UI. Player vs developer escalation.

One of the things players will claim is un-fun is the total reliance on statistics at all. But that only bothers people when they're getting bored with the game anyway. Prior to that they were just fine with it.

Except we are not where we began -- the original gameplay (which involved estimation "how much can i dps?") has been removed and replaced with explicit "you can dps all way to here but no farther". Again, can someone explain the fun factor of this approach? (to remind, the "you can now require players to juggle the aggro" aspect of it is not new by any means)  :why_so_serious:

Well, having read that thoroughly I don't really see anything unusual or unique there.  He has two deagro mechanisms, one that permanently reduces a target's threat and one that temporarily removes a target from the threat list.  And there need to be regular tank switches.  Deagro mobs of either type are not unique to WoW, tank switching isn't unusual nor does it require threat meters.  The fight would be considerably more difficult without them, but every mechanic described in that article about him is learnable without having to watch bars.

Threat meters are being put into the base UI for understandable reasons: most people cannot or will not learn to manage threat without them, and breaking them would be both difficult and create a tremendous amount of angry customers since people have gotten used to them and most are unable or unwilling to raid without them.  It makes the most business sense to do this, but it doesn't make the game more fun.  They might have been able to break them had they acted quickly upon the initial appearance of such tools, but they let them sit for too long.

This is interesting; i wonder if there was built-in display of one's approximate threat level (say, as the character moves on the aggro list upwards, they gain increasingly bright red aura or something) ... would that be deemed 'good enough' of an indicator, or would people still insist they need to know these things exactly.

(ok so it's MMOs we talk about and their specific brand of players, so it's mostly rhetorical question... but still)

I don't think visible threat meters is what WOW popular.

I find the derision of things (that you are not forced to install) that supposedly remove the challenge from the game, but that enable new crops of people to play said game without dedicating the required hours to develop 'The Juju'...Curious.

And by curious, I mean fucking retarded.

I mean, really, If you want more challenge, don't install the mod. If you wish to game with a group of people that hold up as a golden example a complete internalization of game mechanics, do it. Bemoaning the fact that there are people whose playtime is enabled because of these things is...I would call it retarded. but I don't think english lets me string together enough Rs for the amount of tardedness. :P

Here's the thing.  Threat meters, along with other similar addons that take any of the guesswork and learning out of fighting, are like if someone who wasn't too good at a fighting game (like me, for example) wanted an option where, every time the enemy does a move, a button flashes on the screen showing what to press to counter the enemy's attack.  Who needs to learn attacks, counters, patterns, anticipate the enemy's moves, guess what the right time to launch an attack or prepare for a counter might be?  Just hit the button when it flashes!

That's pretty much where WoW is with all the addons used in raiding.  Look at BigWigs/Deadly Boss Mods or whatever, that flashes warnings on your screen.  Threat meters that flash a warning when you approach the tank's threat.  Etc.  Big flashing button that says "DO THIS", basically.  Raiding hasn't quite gotten there yet, but it's sure heading that way.  Where for every fight you have an addon flashing in your face telling you exactly what to do and when to do it.  Sure, at first nobody has that info, but how many of the people doing it are actually going in without the knowledge?  Think about this: out of ten million players, it's likely less than a thousand that's come up with the strategies for every recent boss mob in the game, after which they're posted on the internet, addons are made to include the key points of the fight, and so on, eliminating as much decisionmaking as is currently possible with the tools we have available to us.

Addons are great.  For customizing your UI, for adding convenience and removing tedium.  But, y'know...I didn't realize we considered the decisions we used to have to make during fights to be part of that tedium.

Taking this notion "it does not matter if gameplay is greatly simplified, as long as it allows more people to enjoy the game" to logical conclusion... picture yourself a game mod that #1 instantly sets the level of character to cap #2 permanently turns off damage dealt to the player #3 kills any targetted NPC with press of single button.

Quite clearly simplification like this would greatly increase number of people able to play the said game... but do you still find it... curious... that some people might raise an eyebrow and ask what exactly is there left from the original design after such modification is applied, that still allows to call the whole experience the "game", and where's the fun in dumbing things down that much?

And if you consider asking questions aimed to understand someone else's apparently different mentality where it comes to these things "retarded" ... welp. it's certainly easier approach than say, providing an actual answer.

See, there's the argument: If you don't wish to have your gameplay pushed to that 'logical conclusion' (which is a strawman, and not logical at all), DON"T INSTALL THE FUCKING MOD. This isn't a fundamental change to the game engine, this is a something that individual players can apply to affect their grasp of the things that flow out of their combat log.

As for your second 'point'...The original 'design' of MMOs is to get the maximum number of subscribers, and retain them as long as possible. That's it. Period. I'm thinking inside that boundary, in terms of 'What's going to attract the people that I care to play a game with, and keep them around?'

And the third point...I'm not sure where that vagina sand comes from; I'm pretty sure I wasn't responding to you directly.

EDIT: Inserted a necessary 'to'. And snuck in a fucking.

Guys, I think you're missing the point.

For normal play, threat meters aren't needed.  More people are moving into raiding as that's all that has been left and kind of what people expect these days.  Threat meters don't have to be fun, because we're talking about a mechanic to benefit RAIDING.

Thank you, that is all.

Goomba at optimal range, press A now!

The star is hidden in the middle block. After grabbing it keep on running left until you reach the stairs. Don't jump until you see the second turtle climb down.

See, that's the point you're missing -- the discussion is focused on changes to gameplay that are result of having the "fucking mod" installed. Not about "my" gameplay. So your brilliant advice is absolutely irrelevant.

Very well. So, you reckon a game of Skinner Says has bigger pull as far as subscribers are concerned? Let's say that's true, and people do find it more fun to follow explicit instructions to predictable results, rather than take risk of making their own decisions. But then why exactly this kind of gameplay (farming bosses for the loot using known strategies, killing mobs that don't pose any risk and just take time etc) ... is at the same time claimed to be boring as fuck, not in the least precisely because nothing ever happens?

Dude, it's not me who is flying off handle calling people retards and STRESSING THE POINTS WITH CAPS. You want to talk sand there, check your own piping first.

No. I just went back and checked; this duscussion has never been about that. This started with someone saying that WoW mods were a good feature and grunk popping out with 'RAWR PUSSY' (pausing for a moment, you basically agree with grunk. Think about this for a second) and the discussion since has been about threat management...Or on a larger, implied scale, mods that help people play the game. I mean, no one's even brought up something that validly makes the point you think you're making, like Decursive. Which DID start to unbalance fights, so they broke it. Done deal. Fixed.

Instead - Threat management? What? THIS you pick?
Every boss fight is one, big, scripted event. That's why practice helps. The things that are random and need to be responded to dynamically in any of those fights will be there whether you're using a threat mod (or a macro, or whatever) or whether you're doing some mental threat-fu. Claiming that one is better than the other in some kind of 'gamist absolutisim' is ridiculous.


Well, maybe I am a little sandy, but it makes me irate because this discussion has been done to death, and the people arguing against it are the people that it benefits most. You can just...Not use it. It fills the gap for people who need it, WITHOUT forcing them to alter the game for everyone. The notion that 'Naw, they need to leave that shit out, then people will cowboy up and play it the RIGHT way!', yeah...That discussion has been had. Starts with a V. This attitude pisses me off because the people that bring it to the table, in one fell swoop not only fail to realize that it's to their benefit that the mechanism exists, but at the same time impugn people who find the damn thing useful as idiots, who suck and can't play the game (again...stateroom on the grunkboat).

Actually, Lan, I see your point, but it's not just about raiding. I play in a guild specifically for older people, with kids and lives and whatnot, a lot of who are first-time MMOers, who don't get enough playtime to internalize some of these mechanisms, and similar. Or they're just timid and would rather not tank because they might waste people's time, or any of a host of reasons. Mods like this go a long way in getting people past that, sometimes even to the point that they don't need said mod anymore.

Bah, but those people should just uninstall the game right now, lest they screw things up for the 'real' players...because fuck 'em, that's why! Right, tmp?

EDIT: Spel

EDIT: Oh, and just for some validity and re-railage, I agree that a moddable UI is a good feature, as it allows them to add new features based on actual popularity, rather then in a vacuum or listening to - god forbid - forum request volume.  :grin:

I think if you had a graphical meter, that would be great. I would rather have some type of character rendering in the game world instead of relying on numbers. But then, if we went all the way to the true source of what I want, it's a game that doesn't require the numbers at all because they created more interesting experiences than just whack-a-mole with X players of Y class disposition during Z period of time.

Except getting 25-75 of your closest friends together to "learn" an encounter over dozens of days resulting in hundreds of people-hours is a big pain in the ass :-) The fact is that these meters can exist because the underlying system is statistical. Hence the escalation between player and dev I mentioned earlier. To get out of this trap requires a completely new type of experience. Like, say, other genres :wink:

Moddable UIs allow for the reduction of guesswork by a chunk of players who know well enough that these are scripted encounters but are too arsed to spend the time figuring it out.

Hey, I have an idea, cockass. If you've heard this discussion before and it makes you irate you can just... not read it.

(http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/6386/youreverycutenowfuckofftp6.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)

Once again the real complaint here is poor design. The encounters are too hard and not fun, therefore we need a bunch of UI mods. That's a design problem and more meters are a work around.

Well, that's kind of the elephant in the room, isn't it? :) The mods that are being discussed are spackle for WoWDIKUfail, admittedly, but the principle holds. No matter how good your design team is, if you have anything except a niche, homogenous playerbase you're going to have a spread of player 'skill', regardless of what skill means. Either you let players adjust the game - Which is very hard to do right - Or you let players adjust their experience of the game. Which is why I'd argue for the equivalent of what the WoW moddable UI does.

if EQ had allowed mods, there would be threat meters in EQ 6 years ago, threat management may take skill but it's NOT fun.

I can juggle a ton of groceries in my arm and open my front door, it's a skill and not everyone can do it but I'd still like a bag. Just because something is a skill doesn't mean it's necessary. often times it's useless and unecessary.

I  :heart: mods.

(http://www.fohguild.org/forums/attachments/screenshots/70378d1208804635-your-wow-ui-morogrim_down_murlocs.jpg)

Yes well there's always someone out there who takes things too far.

(http://darkdiamond.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/mario-mobil-sideways-ish1.jpg)(http://darkdiamond.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/the-back-of-the-mario-whip.jpg)

Is it wrong that I can recognize 85-90% of the mods from that screenshot?

 If you find that you can no longer even see the landscape, all you're doing is monitoring names and ciphers, then you're ready for EVE.

ag_unitframes
BigWigs
ArcHud
Elkano's Buffbars
PallyPower
that dumb ace-based necrosis knockoff
Prat
Bartender3
KLHThreatMeter
XRaidStatus
Grid
Scrolling Combat Text
FuBar
Quartz
that ace-based timerbar mod that is not Antagonist
A lot of fubar mods (durability, cash, latency, clock)

What do I win?

An intervention.

hur hur hur

I don't raid anymore, but I'm a whore for tinkering with shiny UI mods. I play more DotA then I play WoW.

When I stopped playing Wow, I was running about 80 mods. 

What I'm getting here is that there are people who would rather fight against the limited interface than the monsters.

I mean, I could try to play without using my mouse too, would that bring me closer to the true spirit of gaming?

I think the counterpoint is that you're not "fighting" the monsters.  Rather, you're managing your interface and using mods to make this management process more efficient.  It's a problem with the game moreso than with the user.   

And the difference between WoW and almost any other game is that WoW lets you modify the UI to your liking, so that when you "aren't fighting the monster" you at least aren't being forced to fight the UI.  It's not like you really feel like you're "fighting" the monster in a game like Final Fantasy, or pretty much any other game that exists.

I think the reason WoW felt compelled to allow UI addons, whereas single player games often don't, is the number of hours spent playing WoW.  I'm sure that screenshot above looks chaotic as hell to you and if your interface were like that you would feel like you were playing the UI and not the game, but I'm sure to the guy who uses it it feels like he's fighting the monster just as much as he feels in any other game, because that's the UI he's used to seeing and he knows what parts to focus on and when.

I've been pursuing a theory that gameplay ultimately comes down to a handful of puzzle types, and that much of what we've thought of as game design is really just finding ways to disguise those puzzles.  Screenshots like that go a long way towards vindicating the theory (because when the players can, they strip away the disguise).

--Dave

Raph said that a while ago. Gameplay is basically interconnecting minigames that are connected through increasingly complex minigames into an overarching metagame.

Yeah, I know.  I think I've managed to drill a level deeper (to where those minigames are all the same), but I'm still working through the implications.  There are some definite phase transitions on the way up the scale, where progress is not just a fractal elaboration on the theme.

--Dave

There is no spoon.

WoW mods to me are just again getting to the heart of the experience. At the level of play shown in that screenie, the graphics and the world basically don't matter. If you achieve that level of immersion, as someone said, you truly are ready for Eve. Or to teach advanced statistics. :-)

Who'd a thunk it 10 years ago that the most popular 3d MMORPG today would look like playing Windows 3?

I would have guessed that by now when we checked our inventory, the screen would show us rummaging around in a 3d in-world knapsack, the damage done to monsters and players would be visible on the avatars, etc, but not a 2d overlay of data.

It's all just about manipulating that joy buzzer part of our tiny little snake brains.

You know what this means? The UI is broken.

That picture just shows me how much MMO's are still about spreadsheet gameplay.  You may as well just paste a spreadsheet on a Vargas painting and call it a game.

Now you sound like Raph Koster.

I'll spare you the point where I say myths trump mechanics.

That is just way too much crap to keep up with. You can't PVP worth anything with a 1 centimeter viewing space after accounting for every UI mod window you have to have open.

That's because this setup is only for dynamic and challenging PvE encounters.  :awesome_for_real:

That would be one of the "Phase Transitions" I was speaking of (there are 5 of them).  The one between "Structure" and "Deconstruction" to be specific.  Which is probably way too cryptic, but I'm not ready to expose the whole framework to critique yet.

--Dave

Is your "Maize" essay still around here?  Ya'll need a website or something ;)

You meen zees (http://f13.net/index.php?itemid=720)?

Some people find fucking with spreadsheets fun. News at 11.

This discussion about what is and isn't a game and what is and isn't fun is silly. Some one guy likes watching a cow smash an elf and seeing blood spurting that indicates the grevious bodily harm he is inflicting. Another likes watching the numbers that come up and keping track of various timers in order to maximise the number of damage he can do within the constraints of the system as he understands it. Another likes putting numbers into spreadsheets in order to work out how the system works in order to code ui elements which then pass this information on to players.

Insofar as you are relating to the game in some manner you can say what you're doing is gameplay, insofar as you enjoy what you are doing you can say what you are doing is fun.

I mean, I post on forums about games because I find it fun. When I discuss the merits of a certain talent or ability on the EJ forums I enjoy myself, and I enjoy muself because of the relationship between that conversation and the game. I sometimes find it more fun that actually logging into WoW and 'playing' the game. Messing about with numbers, thoughts and opinions, within and without the gameworld itself, is a gameplay element.

The problem with your theory is that if you don't have fun the way I tell you to have fun, then you're doing it wrong.

I always forget the fundamentals.  :cry: